"The first victory we can claim is that our hearts are free of hatred. Hence we say to those who persecute us and who try to dominate us: ‘You are my brother. I do not hate you, but you are not going to dominate me by fear. I do not wish to impose my truth, nor do I wish you to impose yours on me. We are going to seek the truth together’. THIS IS THE LIBERATION WHICH WE ARE PROCLAIMING."
Oswaldo José Payá Sardiñas (2002)

Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Fifty years from that speech by Martin Luther King Jr. and like him I have a dream of a Cuba that is inclusive, plural and modern where we all fit. - Yoani Sanchez, August 28, 2013 over twitter

Martin Luther King Jr

Fifty years ago on August 28, 1963 much of the United States was in the midst of a struggle to do away with segregation and civil rights activists were struggling to pass voting rights legislation. The march on Washington D.C. that culminated in Martin Luther King Jr.'s I have a dream speech sought to pressure legislators into voting for the legislation, and they succeeded.

This was a nonviolent revolution that sought justice, and changed the United States of America and today an African American president sits in the White House evidence that part of Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream has been achieved.

Let us compare this with the violent revolution that sought to end a dictatorship ninety miles away from U.S. shores in Cuba that in 1963 was just four years old. Fifty years later and the Castro dictatorship that replaced the Batista dictatorship is still in power killing and repressing. Despite fraudulent statistics in areas of health care and education the reality of an ongoing cholera epidemic and the mass exodus of millions of Cubans demonstrates the nightmare that exists in Cuba today. Tonight an unjustly imprisoned Cuban is on his 30th day on hunger strike demanding to be free.

Let us also not forget that many who fought alongside Fidel Castro in the 1950s took up arms again against him in the 1960s in an armed struggle that failed wiping out all opposition: violent and nonviolent for years.

Sadly, despite the successes of the civil rights movement in the United States by 1967 Martin Luther King Jr. found his nonviolent posture challenged by a black power movement that instead of accelerating change in areas of social and economic justice brought it to a halt. Reverend King warned black activists not to take the way of Castro and Guevara:

“Riots just don’t pay off,” said King. He pronounced them an objective
failure beyond morals or faith. “For if we say that power is the ability
to effect change, or the ability to achieve purpose,” he said, “then it
is not powerful to engage in an act that does not do that–no matter how
loud you are, and no matter how much you burn.” Likewise, he exhorted
the staff to combat the “romantic illusion” of guerrilla warfare in the
style of Che Guevara. No “black” version of the Cuban revolution could
succeed without widespread political sympathy, he asserted, and only a
handful of the black minority itself favored insurrection. King extolled
the discipline of civil disobedience instead, which he defined not as a
right but a personal homage to untapped democratic energy. The staff
must “bring to bear all of the power of nonviolence on the economic
problem,” he urged, even though nothing in the Constitution promised a
roof or a meal. “I say all of these things because I want us to know the
hardness of the task,” King concluded, breaking off with his most basic
plea: “We must not be intimidated by those who are laughing at
nonviolence now.”

Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., like Gandhi before him, was assassinated on April 4, 1968 meanwhile Fidel Castro has survived to the present day hanging on to power and turning it over to his brother as the island of Cuba sinks into misery and despair.

Martin Luther King Jr. and Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas

Meanwhile another courageous man of Christian faith, Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas and a youth leader from his movement who had been a seminarian were martyred on July 22, 2012 for advocating nonviolent change in Cuba. Oswaldo had managed to obtain more than 25,000 signatures in a Stalinist dictatorship demanding a vote to change the system and recognize the rights and dignity of Cubans. Like Martin Luther King Jr. he was killed but his ideas and example live on to inspire others.

Fifty years ago today in Washington D.C. following a nonviolent march on the capitol to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial over 250,000 Americans gathered together peacefully to demand that the United States live up to the values espoused in the Declaration of Independence and in the Constitution and the promise made when Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. It was a nonviolent moment in American history in which citizens spoke truth to power. Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. addressed the nation proclaiming his dream of the future of the United States.

Less than four years later in 1967, Martin Luther King Jr. would say that the dream had "turned into a nightmare" with the war in Vietnam and the black power movement that embraced violence.

Fifty years ago today was a moment of optimism and hope that generated positive changes across America with voting rights laws that would soon be passed and government institutionalized segregation become a thing of the past. This was not because of one speech but through a movement that with its disciplined nonviolent resistance changed the United States of America forever. Reverend King fifty years ago outlined the movement's nonviolent vision:

"This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take
the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of
democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the
sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of
racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a
reality for all of God's children.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the
moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until
there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an
end, but a beginning. And those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now
be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual.
And there will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his
citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our
nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

But there is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the
warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice: In the process of gaining our
rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our
thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must
forever conduct
our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative
protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic
heights of meeting physical force with soul force."

It is a message that is still relevant today not only in the United States but in many places around the world were injustice persists.

Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Iván
Fernández Depestre is a Cuban national of 42 years of age born on October 28, 1971 with identity card number: 71102805363
who lives in the interior of Cuba in Placetas, Villa Clara province. Since July 30, 2013 he has been and continues to be slowly dying on hunger strike protesting his unjust imprisonment since day one. Today marks 29 days on hunger strike and there are signs that his life is now in the balance.

I believe that hunger strikes should be a method of last resort that should be well thought out on all fronts in order to analyze the likelihood of success and its moral soundness in a particular circumstance.

Have to be the right person for the job. Not to be used by just anybody.

Right
audience. (You should only fast against someone who was in
sympathy with you on a very deep level. Gandhi never fasted against
the British.)

Doable demand

Last Resort

Consistent with the rest of your life

Iván
Fernández Depestre should not be spending one day in prison for exercising his fundamental rights, but going on hunger strike as a first option is a tactic that I would not counsel. Furthermore, the Castro regime has no sympathy for the Cuban activist, and would happily see him die.

Nevertheless, the man's actions are nonviolent but I would remind activists entertaining following that line of action that there are at a minimum 197 different nonviolent actions that one could attempt before arriving at the extreme of carrying out a hunger strike.

However,
other human rights defenders in the island and abroad are mobilized
trying to save Iván
Fernández's life and finding other means to pressure the regime in order to obtain his
demand of freedom.

Iván has been jailed since July 30, 2013 under circumstances
where anywhere else in the free world would just be the exercise of one's civic
duty. Although not formally recognized, he is a prisoner of conscience. On the afternoon of July 30, 2013 Iván together with other nonviolent opposition activists Loreto Hernández García, Yuniel Santana Hernández, así como Yaite Diasnelli Cruz
Sosa, Xiomara Martin Jiménez and Donaida Pérez Paseiros carried out a march in memory of the Cuban martyr Frank País, who was killed in the struggle against Fulgencio Batista (the prior dictator to the Castro brothers).

This was not his first demonstration. Jorge Luis Garcia Perez "Antunez" has made public videos that show Iván taking part in nonviolent demonstrations for a free Cuba. On July 22, 2013 he marched in tribute to the memories of martyred dissident leaders Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas and Harold Cepero Escalante who both died under suspicious circumstances on July 22, 2012 in Cuba.He was tried on August 2, 2013 in a secret,
closed door and summary trial in Placetas, Villa Clara and condemned to 2
years in prison for "pre-crime social dangerousness." Diario de Cuba describes his current health status as critical. Now is the time to get the word out and demand this courageous activist's freedom using all creative, nonviolent means at our disposal.

Thank you ODCA for the invitation and courageous support that has signified the cause of truth and rights for Cuba. Thank you for the recent recognition of the entire Cuban delegation, many in my country have given their lives for the cause of liberty as Mr. Ocejo reminded us is the cause of happiness.

"These are times of dangers and hopes for Cuba. The lack of freedom and rights maintains the people immersed in great disadvantages. The government complicates the situation because it refuses a democratic opening while Cubans want real change and transparency, fraud is imposed" warned my father, remembering that:

"There remain mechanisms of repression and surveillance of citizens, total dependence and obedience of the courts of the group in power and their ordinances, cruelty in prisons, systems of control, concepts and practices of exclusion and marking or targeting, the fence of laws which are anti-rights and undemocratic are maintained over the citizen, despotism, the lack of democratic instruments for citizens to decide and finally the power group itself still stands above its own laws and with all the privileges stated above.

Moreover poverty grows and deepens the differences, under the simulacrum of economic opening. Also the cult of personality and the concretion of dynastic succession are affirmed with the denial of Cuban’s civil and political rights. These factors are components of the totalitarian regime that has caused and continues to cause severe damage to the people, an anthropological damage. The antagonistic contradictions between the regime and the freedom and rights of citizens remain. What has changed then? Or what is changing in Cuba: the people."

These people do not want to move from savage communism to savage capitalism, nor want Russian style or Chinese style changes, the people of Cuba want to participate in building our future and to be happy.

Two months ago, after 54 years, before the evident failure, the government has accused people of not having "honesty, [...] decency, [...] shame, [...] decorum, [...] honor and [...] sensitivity" and has threatened to take coercive measures. But have not referred to the torture or the forced repatriation of Cuban migrants in a concentration camp in the Bahamas. Neither have they spoken about outbreaks of dengue and cholera, as they also did not do before with polyneuritis, or serious statistics on the spread of HIV in Cuba, or the rate of suicide and domestic crimes, or medical malpractice cases, or the use of abortion as birth control, or the many other expressions of the "culture of death" on the Island.

Nor have yet announced merchant ships smuggling ammunition and fully operational arms, violating the national security of a fraternal country like Panama, violating several UN resolutions on the dictatorship of North Korea, and putting innocent lives at risk

The Cuban government is not legitimate, as the Venezuelan government is not and will not be because presidents of the world shake hands with the impostors in power, it will be much less because they spearhead regional organizations like the CELAC, as is the case of the Cuban dictator, to the shame of Latin America. Legitimacy is delivered by the people at the polls, in free elections, in an atmosphere of respect and safety. We all know that's not what happened in April in Venezuela and we all know that has not occurred in Cuba for more than 60 years.

That is why I believe our challenge as the Christian Democratic family resides in looking at the people before power, the human being who lives and suffers from power when it is not at the service of society. But that fragments and sickens society to perpetuate itself. What we are seeing in some of the countries of our America at the turn of a decade find themselves divided on populism, whose greatest concordance is the obstinacy with which they cling to power. They also agree on their embracing Cuba's dictators.

The humanist values of defending life, truth, sustainable and inclusive economic freedom, equality, the environment, and fraternity join us here today. The budgets that we defend do not respond to ideological fundamentalism, but they are a radical proposal that need firm parties; requires strong and free spirits that do not form a complex before power or before fashion or before a trend or before apparent majorities. Other forces and languages inconsistent with democracy have shown no qualms in showing they are allies. I understand that our option involves taking the side of the poor of the Earth, which in our region are many and they are also those who cannot even say that they are poor, because a government has hijacked all their rights.

I believe in the Christian humanist project as a real and effective alternative to the so-called crisis of disorientation that our societies seem to suffer. The world is confused with epithets that others have put on us, these negative nuances that fill the term conservative, or counterpose us to so called progressive forces. It does not seem to me that we have to define ourselves from codes which other interests have imposed, the message embodied in the Christian humanist option is new and renovating in a world that has displaced human beings from the center of its priorities. In the words of my father: "neither the state nor the market, can be above the rights, the will and freedoms of persons."

Please do not abandon, let us not abandon those in America and beyond, from positions of danger fighting for the same concepts that bring us here today. Not without suffering, I am witness what a tyrant can do when they feel that those who oppose them have been abandoned, when they feel that their opponent is alone. My father, like Caldera, like Adenauer, thought: "Rights have no political color, or race, or culture. Nor dictatorships have political color. They are not right or left, they are only dictatorships "and recalled that" Cubans have not chosen the path of peace as a tactic, but because it is inseparable from the goal of our people. Experience tells us that violence begets violence and, when political changes are made in this way, you arrive at new forms of oppression and injustice," as painfully illustrated by the hundreds of people killed this week in Syria and Egypt.

Most of Cuba's peaceful opposition agrees to defend the road map of The Peoples Path, we expect you solidarity with the demands of this proposal. In this framework thousands of Cuban citizens ask for your support in our demand for a plebiscite of the legal initiative of the Varela Project. We do not seek another caudillo to replace a dictator; we have a proactive and inclusive solution waiting for your solidarity. We need your help to stop the violent repression of the state security of the Cuban government against members of the Cuban democratic movement, to be able to keep fighting for real change. The recognition of the entire truth is essential to the reconciliation process of the transition to democracy that we seek. We need your endorsement of the need for an independent investigation to clarify the circumstances of the attack on my father and Harold Cepero, to help remove the sense of impunity that the Cuban government has and with which it continues to repress with increasing violence.

The essential transformation is taking place in the minds and hearts of Cubans. It's time to begin the process of reconciliation that we all want, because what we want is to live in harmony and freedom. Long ago the people stopped trusting the regime and despite the repression and apathy fewer and fewer Cubans are being dominated by fear.

On December 5, 2011 my father reminded them in a message to this organization that "there have already been many conjectures, postulates and intellectual exercises. There have already been many. Now for you should be the time of solidarity with Cuba, with our demands:

We want all rights. These are the changes we want!
Now Cubans are going to demand real change, now let's fight for free elections,” through a plebiscite!

I think that the authoritarian phenomena that have been generated in our region demonstrate that what you do for the freedom of the Cuban people will be a commitment for the good of all America.

Thursday, August 22, 2013

Half of the Cuban people believe that the leader of Christian
Liberation Movement, Oswaldo Paya, was murdered. The other half know
it. - William Cacer Diaz, over twitter August 22, 2013

Oswaldo and Harold: Murdered by Cuban State Security

397 days ago on a Sunday afternoon two decent and good men were killed. At the time the evidence and suspicions pointed to Cuban government involvement. There was speculation that a state security vehicle had crashed into the car in which Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas and Harold Cepero Escalante were traveling with two European visitors both members of political parties related by shared values to the Christian Liberation Movement killing them. However, over the past year the evidence that comes to light paints a more disturbing picture.

The Cuban government's attempt to manufacture a crash scene claiming that only one car was involved and that the driver had been speeding and hit a tree ran into some difficulties despite the show trial. The two Europeans who survived the crash on July 22, 2012 although detained and held incomunicado, drugged, and subjected to the tender mercies of Cuban state security had already send text messages abroad shortly after the crash indicating the involvement of another vehicle.

After they were released from confinement in Cuba and got back to their home countries and were able to talk the picture that emerges is that Oswaldo and Harold survived the accident that the injuries the Spaniard sustained were after the accident and with the butt of a gun. The two Cuban human rights defenders were murdered in cold blood by agents of Cuban State Security.

The fact that the international community with some noble exceptions has remained indifferent before this atrocity and that to the present date a serious, international and transparent investigation has not been undertaken into the deaths of Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas and Harold Cepero is an outrage that must be remedied.

Between late July and early August 2013, five cases of cholera associated with a history of

travel to Cuba were confirmed, as follow:

On 24 July 2013, the National IHR Focal Point for Italy reported to WHO a confirmed case of cholera (V.cholerae serogroup O1 Ogawa) in a 47 year old male patient, with travel history to Havana from 23 June to 13 July of 2013. Relevant details of the case, including detailed travel history while in Cuba and further laboratory investigations were shared with competent local authorities in Cuba and WHO.

On 9 August 2013, the National IHR Focal Point for Venezuela confirmed two cases of cholera (V. cholerae serogroup O1 Ogawa) in persons, a 51 year old male and 55 year old female, with history of travel to Havana, Cuba.

On the same date, 9 August 2013, the National IHR Focal Point for Chile reported two cases of cholera, one laboratory confirmed (V. cholerae serogroup O1 Ogawa) and the other by epidemiological link, in persons returning from travel to Cuba.

The record in Cuba is clear. Cuba remains a totalitarian dictatorship without a free press and even international and accredited press bureaus are cowed into silence out of the justified fear that they would be ejected from the country for reporting negative news. The Cuban government is engaged in a practice of deceit that endangers lives.

All of this raises two obvious questions: If the number of cases in Cuba are as
low as reported by the government are accurate why are the only reported
cases of tourists from these three impacted countries with cholera from
Cuba? What are the actual number of cases and fatalities in Cuba?

Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Press Release of the Christian Liberation Movement about the complaint presented to the National Court in Spain.

Rosa Maria Payá Acevedo andMaura
Ofelia Acevedo Acevedo

Madrid, Spain. August 19, 2013Maura
Ofelia Acevedo Acevedo and Rosa Maria Payá Acevedo wife and daughter of the
late national coordinator of the Christian Liberation Movement ("MCL")
in Cuba Oswaldo J. Payá Sardiñas, on behalf of the family and the MCL, presented by their lawyer
in Spain, and Francisco Andújar, a charge before the Central Court of
Instruction of the National Court against Lieutenant Colonel Águilas, chief of instruction of Crimes of Cuban
State Security and Colonel Llanes, charged with crimes of Cuban State
Security and against all other persons that the court determines in the
course of their investigation as participants in the crimes against humanity
that culminated with the death of Oswaldo and the youngest member of the coordinating council of the MCL Harold Cepero on the 22nd of July 2012 in Cuba national territory.

The
lawsuit is made necessary and indispensable for a basic question of justice,
since the current Cuban regime can not keep chasing, abusing, lying,
murdering and intimidating a society with impunity, as absolute
masters of the lives of millions of people.Oswaldo Payá represented the sentiments of a large majority of the despairing Cuban people. As MCL
national coordinator he had worked out together with other opponents a viable proposal of political participation, equality and respect against a
failed system that wants to remain at all costs in power, and so they have
stated on numerous occasions voiced by its highest representatives.The
Cuban and Spanish peoples have the legitimate right and in law to know the truth of
what happened that day, where a Spanish citizen was killed: Oswaldo Payá, and vilely accused a youth, also a Spanish citizen, Ángel Carromero, of a crime that he did not commit.Confident that in Spain, where the judiciary is independent from political
power and where they can seek the truth without fear or pressure, we can
carry out this complaint and assign responsibility to those involved in
this horrible act, whoever they are.

The
MCL has never sought revenge and not incite hatred or violence, but we are also not
afraid to claim our rights either in the Assembly of Popular Power in
Havana or the National Court in Madrid. The first answered us with lies, slander, insults, arrests, beatings and death. We hope that in the second we find the space to find the justice we need.More information at http://www.oswaldopaya.org or via e-mail at info@oswaldopaya.org

Over twitter today, Cuban opposition activist Jorge Luis García Pérez "Antúnez"tweeted that Iván
Fernández Depestre is "dying before the complicit indifference of the accredited press in Cuba." Why is this man in danger of dying? It is due to a combination of factors: a cruel dictatorship, non-interest by the press, and the lack of familial support for Iván. Amnesty International recognized 5 other Cubans as prisoners of conscience but has still not designated him as one. Hopefully, the won't do it posthumously as they did with Wilman Villar Mendoza who died in January of 2012.

Iván
Fernández Depestre is a Cuban national of 42 years of age born on October 28, 1971 with identity card number: 71102805363 who lives in the interior of Cuba in Placetas, Villa Clara province. He has been unjustly imprisoned since July 30, 2013 under circumstances where anywhere in the world would just be the exercise of one's civic duty. Although not formally recognized, he is a prisoner of conscience.

On the afternoon of July 30, 2013 Iván together with other nonviolent opposition activists
Loreto Hernández García, Yuniel Santana Hernández, así como Yaite Diasnelli Cruz
Sosa, Xiomara Martin Jiménez and Donaida Pérez Paseiros carried out a march in memory of the Cuban martyr Frank País, who was killed in the struggle against Fulgencio Batista (the prior dictator to the Castro brothers). Portions of the demonstration were recorded and posted on youtube in the video below.

The women involved in the march were able to complete it on this occasion while the men were detained and abandoned in different parts of the city, with the sole exception of Iván
Fernández Depestre who was taken to police headquarters in Santa Clara and accused of social dangerousness, an Orwellian form of "precrime" and tried on August 2, 2013 in a secret, closed door and summary trial in Placetas, Villa Clara and condemned to 2 years in prison.

He is being targeted for two reasons 1) being a member of the Opposition Movement Youth Awaken, affiliated to the Central Opposition Coalition (CCO) and the Orlando Zapata National Civic Resistance and Civil Disobedience Front and 2) having a difficult family situation that does not support him. State security is targeting him because with the lack of family support they view him as a weak link and are trying to break him.

“I was a believer in the politics of petitions, deputations, and friendly negotiations. But all these have gone to dogs. I know that these are not the ways to bring this Government round. Sedition has become my religion. Ours is a nonviolent war.” - Mohandas Gandhi

"Gene Sharp is a political thinker whose influence is now spoken of in same breath as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King. But he is no platform speaker or figurehead at a demonstration. Rather, a quietly spoken political philosopher who's been writing about non-violent struggle for 50 years. What's changed is that his most celebrated pamphlet - 'From Dictatorship to Democracy' - is now grabbing attention around the world. He's been hailed as having helped mould protest movements from Burma to Serbia to Egypt. What is it that Gene Sharp has been able to unlock?"
...

Hardtalk: You are very dismissive, about as you see it, the dangers of negotiation. Is there no place for negotiation with a dictatorship?

Gene Sharp: Sometimes, when the regime is falling apart and the dictator wants to go to the airport to go to another country then negotiate how he can get there, fine, but to be tricked into bargaining with that regime you don’t want half of that dictatorship to survive.

Hardtalk: But, what about a dictatorship that can negotiate itself out of existence. Some sort of half way house.

Gene Sharp: Where has that happened? Where has that happened? Give me one instance…

Hardtalk: In order perhaps to ensure that it cannot be run out of the country or end up in the international criminal court

Gene Sharp: Dictators will not negotiate themselves out of power.

Hardtalk: There is no historical example?

Gene Sharp: Not that I know of, you may know of one.

Hardtalk: Do you think that in that case that if it is all or nothing when it comes to the situation in Egypt a lot of people are very unhappy about the influence the army still has in Egypt.

Gene Sharp: Yes, Yes

Hardtalk: Do you think that in that case people should have, for example, boycotted the recent parliamentary elections?

Gene Sharp: No, the parliamentary elections, I don’t know. But, there was a major mistake made by the opposition to negotiate with the Mubarak regime. They thought Mubarak had to resign. Mubarak said I’ll resign if you put the military in control after I step out. The same military that had been supporting Mubarak for decades which was how Mubarak and his regime came into power and control of the government in the first place. They agreed to turn over power to the military and the military control. They are very reluctant to step out of the political picture completely.

Hardtalk: You see Egypt as a missed opportunity?

Gene Sharp: An incomplete opportunity; the first half has been done. They now face the institution that really helped Mubarak and which gave Mubarak controlling power. They put that in place and have a problem now. ...

It was during this period that Hannah Arendt coined the term "the banality of evil." The film also engages in a nuanced analysis of the difference between what is radical and what is extreme and raises the question of what falls between resistance and cooperation.

Wednesday, August 14, 2013

Over twitter yesterday learned that the Consulate General ofCubainMadrid(Spain), refused therepresentativeof the Ladies inWhitein Europe, Blanca Reyes,an entry permitto her homelandthat shehad requestedonJuly 22, 2013 to see herfather whois 93 years old and very ill and livesintheCubancityofSanctiSpiritus. In an article published by ACI press Blanca said:

"My father is 93 years oldandis very sick. Iwanted to see himbefore he died," She said herfather told herover the phone"that he wanted totouch mebefore he died, but now they will not let mego."

According to ACI Press "theconsulate officialtold her onTuesday thatpermissionhad been 'denied'."

Cuban nationals are required to appear before a consulate and apply for permission to return to their own country even if they have a valid passport.

Between 70,000 and 300,000 Cubans are banned from returning to their homeland under arbitrary criteria set up by the dictatorship. Now regime apologists such as John McAuliff of the Fund for Reconciliation and Development claim that"Cuba now provides greater freedom of travel to virtually all of its citizens than does the U.S." Human Rights Watch in their 2013 report document that Cuban citizens still face numerous restrictions traveling not only internationally but in Cuba itself:

Reforms
to travel regulations that went into effect in January 2013 eliminate
the need for an exit visa to leave the island, which had previously been
used to deny the right to travel to people critical of the government
and their families. However, the reform establishes that the government
may restrict the right to travel on the vague grounds of “defense and
national security” or “other reasons of public interest,” which could
allow authorities to continue to deny people who express dissent the
ability to leave Cuba.
The government restricts the movement of
citizens within Cuba by enforcing a 1997 law known as Decree 217.
Designed to limit migration to Havana, the decree requires Cubans to
obtain government permission before moving to the country's capital. It
is often used to prevent dissidents traveling to Havana to attend
meetings and to harass dissidents from other parts of Cuba who live in
the capital.

In December of 2011 rumors circulated that Cubans travel rules would be loosened, but it was not until January of 2013 that dissidents long barred from traveling were able to once again travel out of the country. There is no right to travel for Cubans. New rules were set up but in a country with no rule of law the arbitrary nature of the dictatorship remains as is demonstrated in the case of Blanca Reyes who is being denied the right to return home to visit her ailing father. The Christian Liberation Movement launched a petition drive known as the Heredia Project and have gathered thousands of signatures calling on the regime to recognize the right to travel of Cubans and to demand real not fake change. In the meantime despite all the propaganda and press the regime with its diktats keeps Cuban families divided and in Blanca's case a daughter from seeing her dying father.

The founder of a dynastic dictatorship that ruled Cuba with an iron grip from 1959 until a health crisis forced the despot to turn power over to his brother Raul, informally in 2006 and formally in 2008.

Extrajudicial killings still take place but in Orwellian fashion are denied. Meanwhile nonviolent opposition leaders that could provide a soft landing die under extremely suspicious circumstances with the direct involvement of state security.

Oswaldo Payá: Life cut short by Castro dictatorship

Cuba's Lech Walesa, Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas met with an "accident" on July 22, 2012 along with Harold Cepero, a youth leader from his movement. Evidence points to a state security vehicle crashing into the vehicle the dissidents were traveling in. More disturbing is the mounting suspicion that both men survived the accident and were killed afterwards. Over a year later and the families have still not been provided with the autopsy results.

Laura Inés Pollán Toledo, the women with the talent, courage, and popular support to be the next president of Cuba after being repeatedly roughed up, pricked with needles by regime agents became ill and died within the span of a week while under the guard of state security.

Internationally, the regime has been an ally to some profoundly loathsome regimes that have engaged and are engaging in genocide and some of whose leaders are now convicted war criminals on the lam.

The fact that some around the world who believe that the ends justify
the means celebrate his example is disturbing especially when observing
that not only where his means immoral and profoundly evil but the end result is a country that is an empty shell of what it was before the Castro brothers achieved power and the patterns of repression endure to the present day.

How many people will never have another birthday thanks to Fidel Castro? Too many.

Sunday, August 11, 2013

Jorge Luis García Pérez "Antúnez" addressed the Assembly of the Resistance at a forum held at Florida International University Law School on August 10, 2013. In his address Antúnez described how the opposition movement is progressing towards a national stoppage and appealing for justice for the many fallen martyrs.

"I come in the name of all those women who inside of this country
struggle for democracy in our country. I have been a victim on countless occasions of beatings, arrests and including victim of attempts to abuse me sexually.
But I come to give hope to all the women struggling for freedom in Cuba
that we will continue to struggle for that freedom that belongs to us, and that those dictatorial men will have to leave our country." - Yris Tamara Pérez Aguilera, August 10, 2013

On Saturday, August 10, 2013 at a Forum organized by the Assembly of the Cuban Resistance held at the Florida International University Law School, Yris Tamara Pérez Aguilera made a powerful presentation on the threats, harassment and violence that she and other female activists suffered for defending human rights in Cuba. She spoke of women such as Damaris Moya Portieles who was beaten and mistreated but was also threatened by state security agents with the rape of her five year old daughter.

Friday, August 9, 2013

Jesus Alexis Gomez 22 days and Ramon Saul Sanchez 15 days on hunger strike protesting mistreatment of migrants in the Bahamas.

Jesús Aléxis Gómez (Day 22 on hunger strike)

The demands have not been met and the hunger strike continues. After 22 days Jesús Aléxis looks gaunt and his face emaciated but he remains determined to carry on his protest. Ramon Saul seems in better shape but as a diabetic undergoing a hunger strike is a precarious exercise.

Ramon Saul Sanchez (Day

Meanwhile this week the hunger strike garnered greater attention in the international media and at the same time Bahamian officials went to Cuba to meet with their Cuban counterparts.

All eyes on a small tent in Little Havana on South West 8th Street and 13th Avenue where two men are putting all on the line for the rights of undocumented migrants in the Bahamas, and if you're the praying type - please say a prayer for them.